Winemaker Notes
Pale gold with bright blond highlights, this complex, balanced, and full-bodied white wine has aromas of white stone fruits and floral notes with persistent acidity.
Blend: 100% Marsanne
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Fragrant and super expressive on the nose, smells incredibly aromatic with white flowers and stone fruit. Crisp and filling on the palate, a gorgeous combination of spicy, mouth watering, zesty citrus and mineral touches - wet stone, slate, liquorice, clove, toast and lemon. Not so expansive, more linear and direct, quite tense with the flavours sticking to one line in the middle surrounded by a tight frame but there's complexity and concentration. Juicy, clean, long and tongue scraping. Feels well made. 3.30pH. Fermentation takes place in natural concrete eggs and a few demi-muids. Grapes come from 4 hectares farmed organically since 2016 and biodynamically since 2018. The first time this wine by Caroline Frey joins the Place de Bordeaux.
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James Suckling
Fascinating nose that combines notes of white flowers with stone fruit and complex vegetal aromas. Both right and structured, this has a tone of wet stone minerality and wild herb freshness. Long complete finish with a wonderful silky texture. A cuvee of roughly two-thirds marsanne and one-third roussanne. Matured in a combination of concrete eggs and demi-muid oak casks. From organically grown grapes.
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Wine Spectator
A taut, racy-styled Hermitage, with a lively mix of white peach flavors and floral high tones pulsing with talc-fine mineral elements, citrus-edged acidity and crushed flint notes. Silky in feel, with impressive cut, this builds in density toward the salty, smoky finish. Refined, with the energy to go the distance in the cellar. Drink now through 2032.
One of the star whites of the Rhône Valley and ubiquitous throughout southern France, historically vignerons have favored Marsanne for its hardy and productive vines. It can make a fruity and delicious single varietal wine as well as a serious, full-bodied version with amazing aging potential. The best examples of Marsanne come from the northern Rhone appellations where it is also blended with Roussanne. Sommelier Secret—Some of the oldest Marsanne vines in the entire world exist not in France but in Australia, in the Victoria region. Settlers planted it in the mid to late 1800s, calling it “white Hermitage.”
One of the smallest and most important Syrah regions of northern Rhone, Hermitage is practically one single south-facing slope of crushed granite, thinly covered with varied, yet well-charted soil types. Many climats (well identified parcels) exist within Hermitage and while some smaller producers make single climat Syrahs, some larger ones blend to make one balanced expression of the appellation.
Though the AC regulations allow the addition of up to 15% white grapes to a red Hermitage, in practice it is usually made from Syrah alone. Winemaking is pretty traditional—or you might say historic—with hot fermentations and aging in older barrels of various sizes. The best wines, characterized by deep, dense and sexy flavors of black fruit, cocoa, licorice and tobacco, have massive textures and a solid 10-20 years aging potential.
The region of Hermitage is totally enclosed; the only place it could go really is to literally fall down its own hill into the city of Tain or the Rhone River. Soil erosion is a problem and terraces exist alongside the hill in order to keep the earth in place. Crozes-Hermitage encloses the region entirely to its north and south.
While Hermitage seems synonymous with some of the best Syrah on the planet, actually about one third of the wine produced here comes from white grapes. The full, lush and robust Marsanne or the less common, but almost more charming, Roussanne create wonderful whites in which the best have great potential for aging, like the reds.